June 4, 2008

By AV Club Staff | June 4, 2008 | 5:29pm

Aux Features Savage Love

I'm a 23-year-old guy and I have been dating my
21-year-old girlfriend for about two years. We did the long-distance thing for
a year, and after she graduated she moved from the East Coast to the Midwest to
be with me while I finish my degree. Everything was great until she moved in
with me. She has a 9-to-5 job and pays her bills. After work, though, all she
wants to do is get high, drink, and watch TV. I want to study, talk, or go do
things. I find myself cooking every meal, cleaning up after her, and doing all
the laundry. On top of this, a very mean side of her has emerged. I love this
girl, or at least I loved her before we moved in together.

I know that we all have our shitty qualities and
that I am a complete shitbag for thinking this stuff, let alone writing to you
about it, but what should I do? If I stay with her, then I'm neglecting my own
future happiness. But if I dump her, then I break her heart, which is something
I don't want to do. Plus, she moved halfway across the country for me.

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Shitty Boyfriend In The Midwest

This
is inelegantly put, I realize, but it came to mind when I read your letter and
my particular blend of dyslexia and Tourette's requires me to put it in print:
If not break her heart now, SBITM, then when? And if not you, SBITM, then who?
Some guy she isn't treating like shit?

Look,
darlin', people get dumped all the time. With the exception of the 12-year-old
"brides" of creepy "fundamentalist" Mormon fucksticks, a little getting dumped
into each life must fall. And you know what? Most of us require dumping in our
20s; getting dumped is good for us. Yeah, yeah: hearts break. But very few
run-of-the-mill dumps at 21 cause hearts to break irreparably. She will get
over it. Which is another way of saying that one day, believe it or not, she
will get over you.

Now,
here's why being dumped is often good for us: After a person is done wallowing
in a pain that no one else has ever experienced or can possibly
comprehend—although others' inability to comprehend never seems to stop a
dumped person from yammering on and on—the person begins to examine the
failed relationship for clues. Why did it end? Whose fault was it? If the
dumped person determines that fault lies with the asshole ex, the dumped person
resolves to be on the lookout for telltale signs of assholery in the future.
Thus does being dumped inspire a person to date smarter and more defensively.

But
often a little voice in the back of the dumped person's head tells the dumped
person that the fault is theirs—that she, in this instance, was a stoned,
drunk, inconsiderate, mean-spirited sack of shit—and the dumped person
resolves to change or date only people attracted to stoners and drunks and
slobs.

So
dump her, SBITM, and tell her why. Then, while she packs and verbally lashes
out and fucks your friends, remind yourself that dumping her was the right
thing to do for her and for you. There is no other option—unless, of
course, you're willing to spend the next seven decades cleaning up after this
inconsiderate piece of shit because she moved to the Midwest.

I'm writing to you not for advice, but to open up
a discussion. For five years I had a famous partner and eventually lost him to
groupies. I was aware that he might one day be tempted to explore this side effect
of his career, to get it out of his system (for good I hope), so I wasn't too
surprised when he finally made the decision to "go there." However, I am left
with some unsettling thoughts, apart from the heartache.

To him, this is a harmless and fun chapter in his
life, but I see a darker side. I find it hard to come to terms with seeing the
man I loved and who respected me as an equal engaging in sexual relations with
girls who, by looking up to him, place themselves beneath him. His
relationships now feature a misbalance of power. I feel a healthy adult seeks
sex with equals. To me, groupies act like unpaid prostitutes, and my ex has
decided it's okay to use girls who adore him without giving much in return. I
can't see how this can be of benefit to either the girls or to him. He's
learning that it's okay to receive without having to give, and they learn that
it's okay to be used. I worry that these experiences help form permanent
negative patterns. Harmless fun? I don't think so. Any thoughts?

Worried Ex

Just
one, WE: How is this any of your business?

Yes,
groupies are like unpaid prostitutes—but they are compensated, WE, with
refracted fame, the dubious perks of being "with the band," and the human
papapapineapple virus (or whatever it's called). So I hardly see these
assignations as necessarily one-way exchanges. The use is mutual. Your ex may
be permanently damaged by this kind of attention or he may tire of cheap,
meaningless sex and come crawling back to you one day. Or, hell, he may one day
star in a squalid and depressing reality show in which he deludes himself into
believing that the women who surround him desire his paunchy old body and his
surgeon-battered face and not a shot at reality-show fame, such as it is.

But,
again, what business is it of yours? He's your ex and the women he's sleeping
with are, ostensibly, consenting adults. We can tut-tut and conclude that your
ex is using these women and that these women are no better than hookers… and so
what? You'll still be his ex, he'll still be banging groupies, and groupies
will go on chasing rock stars long after your ex is playing the casino circuit.

In
your last column, you said Bi Bi Bridie's fiancé issued an "irrational
ultimatum" because he didn't want his partner to sleep with another female. He
made it clear before they were together that that was his preference. She
agreed to those terms.

Yet
in a column three weeks ago, you told Confused In Canada, a guy in a
long-distance relationship whose woman wanted an open relationship, that his reluctance
to open up their relationship didn't mean he was jealous, just monogamous.

Maybe
I'm missing something, but it sounds like both of these guys know what they
want and stated their intentions clearly. Why is the first guy irrational for
stating his intentions and the second guy "just monogamous"?

A Bit Confused

Because
I said so, ABC. Because, unlike CIC's girlfriend, BBB is bi and, yes, that
detail makes a difference. And, most importantly, because I said so.

BBB
shouldn't make a commitment that she's already proven herself to be incapable
of honoring; that's just setting her marriage up for failure. But BBB's fiancé
shouldn't extract a commitment from his girlfriend that he knows she will
either be incapable of honoring or will quickly come to resent him greatly for
having to honor. He can say, "You can have me or you can have this very
important part of your sexuality," to his fiancé, but by doing so he's setting
his marriage up for failure. That makes his ultimatum irrational.

More
letters about last week's column can be found at avclub.com/content/node/80791.

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